2: Seizure

Dawn in San Joaquin, I get out of the car
to stretch and let the dog romp awhile in the field
when my body suddenly begins to stutter, quake
uncontrollably, and part of me watches, detached,
thinking—is this a heart attack? a stroke?—
as my trunk and limbs buck and flail and I
keel onto my back, convulsing. After a time
I see the dog across the field chasing something
and who I am comes back to my body
which has quieted, and I lie on the ground,
cheek against the earth, my ear listening to a pulse
from the underworld that gradually becomes
my heart. I pull myself up, hold on to the car door
as the dog trots over, tongue out, happy—and me, too,
happy to be in this field below the Gold Country,
a moment in spring, in the 53rd year of my life,
wondering what it was that broke open the morning,
scattering incandescence everywhere, the trees
across the way still pulsing, shimmering as if in flames,
and within my body a hushed feeling, beatitude,
a silence closing around silence.